Words seem flat when small children are murdered in cold blood as they were in France yesterday.
I’m not sure I even know what such an act means.
Except that to kill and harm, I would have to separate myself from the other and focus only on the differences. And whatever was different from me would have to be eliminated. There would be no end to the elimination. My suffering would be interminable.
Now, when I see that, I feel compassion arise for victim and perpetrator alike.
Even if I don’t know how far that compassion extends. What if my own son or daughter had been killed in that schoolyard?
In cold blood in the schoolyard
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
it all starts there.
What about the compassion for ourselves?
i feel a lot of compassion for this man who kills.
it is allways coming from somewhere.
but this is easy – fotr it is rather abstract. These are not my children.
It is much more difficult to have compassion with a person next to me who is often very mean/fals to me.
i have litlle compassion then.
"Fixing exclusively on one view or the other gives rise to a host of trouble…" I can understand this and have lots of examples of extreme reactions upon fixed ideas through history. However, it’s hard for me to feel compassion for someone who kills (in this very specific case in Toulouse) without feeling that by doing it I am almost "agreeing" with the "bad guys"…
As Leonard Cohen sings: "Everything has a crack; that’s how the light gets in."
i mean – we all have a vulnerable child inside –
why can’t we have this ‘first vieuw’ constantly ?
as in the first second you meat the other
this first fraction of a second
before we make concepts about eachother
he seconds wee really meet
without recognition of anything
this no-mans-land that is so fresh
so full of wonder
before eyses are seeking for what and who
– before possitions are taken?
before cinema starts?
Indeed, we are all vulnerable. And we have all been children (just like everyone has a mother).
A child is not an adult, though, nor is an adult a child. Yet each is a human being worthy of love.
Recognizing and acknowledging the difference (separation) between adult and child is essential, as is recognizing and acknowledging the unity (non-separation) of adult and child.
Fixing exclusively on one view or the other gives rise to a host of trouble, as we’ve witnessed most vividly this past week in France, and leads ultimately to totalitarianism.
when children are involved, i never have words.
yet, aren’t we all children?
vulnerable, and with each our own fears?